


pulse

by aosc



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-30 09:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15093491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: Keith connects the dots after a couple of weeks, which clocks the second longest he’s ever gone without solving a mystery he has all the necessary clues to.





	pulse

**Author's Note:**

> this is a slice of life-bit of writing you have to get over and done with in order to get a feel for the character voices-type of post.

* * *

  
Keith connects the dots after a couple of weeks, which clocks the second longest he’s ever gone without solving a mystery he has all the necessary clues to – however self afflicted, or whatever, it may be. When he’s able to place the tightness in his chest, the weird sinking in the pit of his stomach, the sudden elatedness that makes him get close to nauseous with how violently he’s mood swinging all of a sudden. It’s not that he’s sick, affected by a sudden wrenching off course while wormholing through a pocket of black space. Keith’s practical; if that’d been the cause, he probably would’ve been better off. Even if there’s nothing to be done about it, he could’ve applied it to the way he thinks about it, worked it off in training or attempted to sleep through a rough patch.

 

As it is, he gets to be content with the knowledge that it has to do with – not him at all, and that the feeling, deep rooted and deeply sat, only rears its head around Lance.

 

He wakes to the far side of the mattress dipping, a tug on the sheets that bunches them at his waist. He hits out blindly, huffs a groan. It is way too early – or late, for this. Whatever _this_ happens to be. “Don’t,” he mutters. No blaring alarm has gone off, and the gut punch instinct he’s relied on all his life remains dormant, quiet, so the hind brain part of his conscious focuses on objective: go back to sleep. He knows, realistically, that the Blade of Marmora knife remains wedged between the wall and the mattress. That he’d barely have to reach for it.

 

The mattress dips again, deeper this time. Keith hits out blindly. “Lemme sleep,” he slurs.

 

“Sshh,” comes back.

 

“Don’t hush me.” He rolls onto his back, stretching for the knot that’s lodged deep in the low of his back.

 

An amused huff. “Dude, I’m not the one waking you up. Be quiet and go back to sleep.”

 

“Mm,” Keith consents, though that’s a lie. He says as much. “You are the one waking me up.”

 

“Did not. I’m super stealthy.”

 

Keith yawns. “Your definition of super stealthy sucks. But if that’s what you want to keep telling yourself.” He crack an eye open, rubs at it to clear his swimming vision and the gross line of sleep grit at his lower lash line. “’M awake now.”

 

Lance’s right eyebrow is raised, but there’s a smile in the curve of his mouth that’s unmistakable. “Man, that doesn’t prove anything,” he says, “I’m still ninja level stealthy. You just sleep like a paranoid freak.”

 

“Probably because there’s a whole evil intergalactic empire out to kill me. I feel like that’s the least freaky thing I could be doing.”

 

“Oh, sure, blame the Galra for that one.”

 

“Will you stop talking and get into bed?” Keith reaches out for him, closing a palm around Lance’s bicep. He tugs him downwards. “Why’re you up, anyway?”

 

Lance slides down until he’s lying flat. He scoots until he’s a long, warm line against Keith. Keith tries to quell the shiver that comes with it – both the thought of it and the actual thing. Lance hums, noncommittal, “Nothing. Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t wanna wake you. Which – you didn’t notice when I left, so, that really kind of proves how stealthy I am.”

 

Keith hums. “It really doesn’t.”

 

Lance smiles as though he’s won a particularly grueling duel with the Gladiator at the deck, though, and Keith realizes it’s moot to keep arguing with him. “You’re not going to tell me why you couldn’t sleep?” Keith closes his eyes again. He curls an arm beneath the pillows – and Lance’s head, and twists onto his side. Lance nudges his knee until he bends it and rests it across his thighs. The sleep fuzzy part of his brain – which is still at least eighty percent, strikes up a low burn in his gut. Makes him take innate notice of the warmth, the physical contact. The way Lance smells of recycled air and, if he’s honest, stale water, but still of something wooden and perfumed, nestled at the base of his throat and along the edge of his jaw.

 

“’S fine,” Lance says. “I just had to clear my head. It’s not the end of the world. You do it all the time.”

 

“Well, you don’t.”

 

“So I have to answer to you when I do?” Lance sits up again, as suddenly as he didn’t.

 

Keith blinks. “I didn’t say that.”

 

“Yeah. You kinda did.”

 

The whiplash of the moment makes Keith’s stomach do a one eighty. He weighs himself up to sitting. The artificial light of the lone nav monitor displaying the immediate area surrounding them is the only source of light in Keith’s room. It sluices, white blue, across Lance’s torso, the line of his neck. The tense bit of his jaw.

 

Keith swallows a harsh breath, and hopes it’ll interrupt the sudden roil of worry that’s threatening to climb up to his chest. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

 

Lance doesn’t reply. He needles a breath through his teeth. Keith waits, because, if there’s anything he’s good at, and it isn’t exactly this part – it’s being quiet until things either blow up or resolve themselves without interference.

 

“Hey, man,” he says, and pulls three fingers through his fringe. He wrangles himself until he’s cross legged, and starts gathering up the hairs at the back of his neck, to tie into some semblance of order. The Castle is never hot, exactly, but he has a tendency to absorb most of Lance’s body heat during the night, and it leaves him slightly sticky at the back of the neck, in the crooks of his elbows. “If you don’t wanna talk about it, you don’t have to.” He stops, and leans his forearms on the splay of his thighs. “I just thought that maybe – “

 

Lance snorts, softly. “Maybe I’d want to, cause I’m the oversharing type who needs to lay all my problems on others?”

 

“No, Lance, I just – “

 

“I get that I maybe come across as that type,” Lance keeps on, bulldozing Keith, “But sometimes I just want to be brooding and not talk about my feelings, too.”

 

“Is that criticism?” Keith says, studying Lance half moon-visible face. He should probably be offended, but it’s just – suddenly, a lot of times these days, really hard to be angry at whatever Lance does, or says. It’s like Keith tripped into him wholly and fully, and is now no longer able to feel much apart from the ridiculous, heart wrenching, stomach flipping stuff he feels as soon as Lance looks at him from across a space and smiles, or when he stoops, because he’s still half an inch taller than Keith, to kiss him. As though everything he feels is intrinsically linked to this – thing – they have now.

 

Lance chews on his lower lip. Still not looking at Keith. “No,” he says, after a while, “I mean, not that it’s cool to be emotionally constipated. That’s uncool. Not at all hot. Totally not charming.”

 

Keith tilts his head. He shifts until the round of his knee connects with the gradually relaxing line of Lance’s thigh. “You gotta know, Lance,” he says, gently, forcing the beat of his heart to remain a steady thump unconnected to the rush of his words. To temper himself, until he’s a little bit of an antithesis to the no exhaust spill of Lance’s everything: words, emotions – everything, “I don’t get half the things you say, but I listen anyway.”

 

Most of the time, he’s too lacking in the department to be in tune with stuff like what to say to be charming, or romantic, or whatever. Keith doesn’t pride himself on that. Most days, he attempts to give himself credit enough for staying in this, for stuffing the feeling of wanting to bolt, of wanting to creep into himself and dig himself an emotionally unavailable hole on some desolate planet, far away from being a part of this aching type of familiarity. Most days, apparently, that’s enough.

 

But some days, he feels like Lance gets it, viscerally, just how much he twists Keith inside out and scrapes at the feelings he tries to stuff down his own throat. And some days, he wants to tell him so. It might not be a subject he’ll ever get an A plus in – but Keith’ll try.

 

Lance turns his head minutely. His throat bobs. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Keith says, “Totally.”

 

“Y’know, your attempts at being sappy are kinda weird, and most of the time they’re not even allowed to qualify as sappy.”

 

Keith shrugs, “Never said I was going to be any good at it.”

 

Lance huffs, “Yeah. Good thing you shacked up with a real Casanova.”

 

Keith replies nothing, because he’s kind of not sure what to say, even if he bets he’s supposed to say that Lance isn’t – that – in any way, shape or form. “Are you done brooding?”

 

Lance ( _finally_ , his traitorous, desperate mind supplies) turns to face him. “I didn’t realize we were timing my brooding sessions now.”

 

“Lance,” Keith says, willing himself to not sound annoyed, “It’s in the middle of the night.”

 

“Okay, Mr. I Brood For Days, I see how it’s going to be. Can’t steal your thunder at the only thing you’re good at.”

 

Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m way better at hand to hand combat than you.”

 

“Right, but we were talking about feelings, Keith. _Feelings_.”

 

Feelings, which, if Keith allows for them to actually surface at the forefront of his mind, turns his stomach churning up into the back of his throat. Becomes this huge, suctioning hole that wants to swallow him up. He looks at Lance, who catches his eye, and smiles a half thing, and it makes Keith want to – do so many things, that they tangle up into a mess that won’t allow him to pick any one out of a hundred.

 

He swallows. “Right,” he says, and, in lieu of continuing to talk about the one thing that confuses him above all else, reaches for Lance, to tug him in close.

 

Lance goes, easily – or easier than Keith’d anticipated, anyway. The tense line of his shoulders relaxes, and when he falls into Keith, he easily maneuvers all of his impossibly long bones into a semblance of order, stooping to where Keith is hunched to kiss him.

 

Keith sighs into Lance’s mouth, not really involuntarily. He opens his mouth, slicks his tongue against Lance’s when he readily accepts the invitation. Lance cups the back of Keith’s head, fingers tugging at the knot of hair until it comes loose. Keith huffs into his mouth, “It’s hot,” he complains.

 

Lance chuckles, “When you wear your hair down? Yeah, totally agree.”

 

“That’s not – “ Keith splutters, feels color splotch over his collar and up his throat. Lance takes the opportunity to kiss him again, slowly, maddening. He sucks at Keith’s bottom lip, and leverages himself more firmly up across Keith’s lap. Keith grabs at Lance’s hips, pulls him closer and heavier onto himself. Lance replies in turn, breaking the kiss, spit slick and heavy eyed, saying, “This is totally the best part about repressing your feelings.”

 

Keith rolls his eyes, “Y’know, you think you’re so good at the whole romance part, but really – “

 

“Babe,” Lance interrupts, rough, as though he knows how that coils hotly in Keith’s stomach, makes arousal a sharp spike down his spine, “I know. No need to stroke my ego.”

 

“Shut up, Lance,” Keith says, albeit half hearted, and scratches his nails down Lance’s back, the expanse of warm, dry skin, because he knows it’ll make Lance’s hips hitch forward. It does; with a warm puff of breath against Keith’s lips, Lance’s erection hard and rubbing against the bump of Keith’s hip.

 

“Shutting up, _Keith_ , if it means you’re gonna continue doing that,” Lance says, through a slanted grin, and tugs Keith along as he angles himself down into the mattress again.

 

“If it makes you keep quiet? I could do this all night.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Lance, on his back now, with Keith’s knees on each side of the curve of his stomach, looks up at him. His hair is fanning out into a dark halo, and the sharp but ruddy light dips into the concaves of wherever a bone gives way; in the dip of his collar, the taper of his sharp shoulders. The hollow beneath his ribs. Keith’s stomach roils, like he’s trapped, all over again, in Blue, as Lance steers her skyward in a burst of hypersonic speed. He ducks his head into Lance’s neck, flattens his tongue over the spot behind his ear that’s sensitive, for some reason. Lance arches up into him, his fingers grabbing for purchase on Keith’s biceps. “I know you meant that like a lame comeback,” he breathes, “But it kinda gets me going when you’re being unintentionally suggestive.”

 

Keith wants to force a laugh, but all the effort gets him is a broken huff, since he chooses to lower himself flat on top of Lance in that moment, mind centering in on chasing all the friction he can get, his state of disquiet stilled thanks to it.

 

“And when you sound like you’re going to break,” Lance says, next, and Keith replies, “Do you ever shut up?” and kisses him again, if only to swallow the words that’ll undoubtedly come after.

 

*


End file.
